Monday, April 27, 2015

Fallout from our warm winter

The photo hints of apples to come, but it also depicts an oddity - a 3/4"
baby apple on the same limb as emerging apple blossoms. What's going on
there? We're actually seeing quite a bit of that this year, a function
of the very warm winter that we had. Fruit trees need "chill hours" (in
widely varying amounts) and when they don't get what they're best suited
to the fruiting buds come out of dormancy erratically - some early and
some late. On this Granny Smith apple tree budding began about 60 days
ago and still continues. It looks like we'll get a decent crop.

The only downside? Several rounds of thinning the baby fruit, instead of the usual once-through to reduce the load on the branches and assure better size.